The 7 October Hamas attack overwhelmed Israel and utterly changed its face. The country experienced a tactical defeat after a colossal failure by Israeli security forces, but it quickly recovered to launch a campaign of mass killings, population expulsions, territorial occupations, assassinations, and other operations, such as the pagers epic in Lebanon.
Let’s not argue here over the value or cost of these violent actions, many of which were immoral and illegal. What cuts much deeper is the shift in morality and values that Israel has undergone since 7 October.
The country’s ability to recover from this transformation is highly doubtful. No military victory can return Israel to what it was before 7 October.
Over the past year, Israel has united around several assumptions: firstly, that the massacre of 7 October had no context whatever, occurring solely because of what they percieved to be the innate bloodthirstiness and cruelty of Palestinians in Gaza.
Secondly, all Palestinians bear the burden of guilt for Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians. And a third assumption relies on the first two: after this terrible massacre, Israel is allowed to do anything. No one anywhere has the right to try to stop it. …..more